It is often helpful to have a map to your destination when taking off on a journey. Without one it is easy to lose your way. This holds true with groups of teachers collaborating as part of a Professional Learning Community (PLC). Sometimes teachers find themselves in situations where they have time to meet as a team to help improve student learning, yet they don’t know how to use the time as productively as possible. As a result, it may be difficult to determine what the next steps should be.
Fortunately I have found a very helpful resource called “The Seven Stages of Teacher Collaboration Diagnostic Tool” from the book “Building a Professional Learning Community at Work: A Guide to the First Year” by Parry Graham and William Ferriter. It effectively articulates how to determine where a team is at in terms of their ability to collaborate and what the next steps should look like. The document contains a list of seven stages along with “questions that define this stage.”
Check out the resource or book and share it with teachers who are looking to make their team more productive.